Reappointment Plan Falters

Mayor Backs Economic Development Director, But Council Balks

December 12, 2007|By DON STACOM; Courant Staff Writer

BRISTOL — Barely a month into his administration, new Mayor Art Ward ran into his first public political conflict Tuesday when the city council refused to vote on reappointing the economic development director.

Ward nominated Jonathan Rosenthal for a four-year reappointment during the council's monthly meeting, and council members immediately voted to table the matter.

Rosenthal, who has been waiting since mid-2006 to be reappointed, shook his head after the vote, and later said, "Looks like another month under the microscope."

The mayor's inability to get a decision about Rosenthal keeps alive the long-standing uncertainty about who will lead the drive to renew the city's downtown and make the best use of the extension of Route 72.

Former Mayor Gerard Couture, an ally of Rosenthal and Ward, left the meeting saying that he was frustrated by the council's action.

"Definitely they should have reappointed him. His credentials are impeccable," Couture said. "He's very highly thought of."

Ward, who served as a council member for 14 years before becoming mayor last month, spent most of his last term demanding that then-Mayor William Stortz decide what to do about Rosenthal.

Stortz had clashed bitterly with Rosenthal, and refused to let the council vote after Rosenthal's appointment expired. Instead, Stortz left him in what officials call "professional limbo," and excluded him from the downtown redevelopment project. Rosenthal kept his $94,000-a-year job, but for the past year and a half clearly worked without the mayor's confidence.

Ward, a Democrat, had hammered Stortz, a Republican, for being unfair to Rosenthal personally and professionally, and for doing a disservice to the city by leaving the appointment up in the air.

But when Ward Tuesday night recommended officially reappointing Rosenthal through 2011, he made no progress toward resolving the matter. Democratic council members Kevin McCauley and Craig Minor moved to table it, and fellow Democrat Cliff Block, along with Republicans Michael Rimcoski and Ken Cockayne, went along. Ward did not vote; the single "no" vote was cast by Democrat Frank Nicastro, the former mayor who had hired Rosenthal in the mid-1990s.

City attorneys and personnel officials have not said what would happen if the council voted against Rosenthal.